Eu and Google anti trust settlement

After a long drawn out battle between google and the EU that could have left google with a huge dent in their pockets their has been a recent final settlement agreement between google and the EU that will show more prominence to competitors. However this final agreement is proving very controversial and despite the fact that through out the anti trust investigation the EU maintained that they were trying to protect the consumers it is far from the case in the final settlement and actually makes things a lot harder for consumers and searchers. The final settlement in fact pushes for competitor results to be pushed into ad space on the search results it will be that if google decides to show a searcher a set of results with ads for example google shopping google must then display a set of other competitor results in similar fashion to their own with the same level of prominence and if for examples images are used google must also provide images as well for the competitor results to improve CTR of the competitor results. But all of this just pushes down the real organic search results further down the page even out of sight… This means the search results are further filled with “ads”! Organic search results are determined by ranking factors based upon popularity and trust. Organic search results are the best option for consumers and because competitors must go into auction to pay google to display their competitor ads in the search results in some cases it is only google that benefits from this new settlement and other BIG businesses. It is a sickening and bad decision from the EU which does not protect consumers and gives them the best possible results. There will be no final market tests to see the actual impact this settlement will have but for small business that rely on organic listings and for the consumer this is the wrong decision by the EU.